


Faen, Manling and Music

by foolhardy



Category: Kingkiller Chronicles - Patrick Rothfuss
Genre: First Meetings, Gen, Kvothe has terrible luck with lutes, and injuries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-04
Updated: 2016-09-04
Packaged: 2018-08-12 22:09:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7951015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foolhardy/pseuds/foolhardy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Plotting of Kvothe and Bast meeting - an unfortunate beginning.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Faen, Manling and Music

**Author's Note:**

> Kvothe’s habit of camping at Greystones becomes a problem when the Prince of Twilight returns from cavorting with pretty humans via the stone the musician has chosen. Bast makes the dubious choice to carry off Kvothe’s lute. Tracking the Princeling to his father’s court Kvothe asked for his lute back. He is teased, taunted, but his patience has worn thin by his fear, twice his lute has been taken from him and splintered by the thief. He calls Bastas by his deep name and now with the fae’s full attention askes for his property to be returned to him. Remmen is irritated that his son would first lead a mortal and also a Namer to his court. Bast is stunned and drops the lute. Its bowl cracks and dents. 
> 
> The mortal knows full well the stupidity of attacking fae especially in their homeland, but for an instant he just might. Sense overrides fury, his eyes lighten, this at least was an accident. If only he’d not shocked the princeling. Fearing what would come from his mouth should he speak Kvothe turns and leaves silence echoing around him. 
> 
> Bastas is upset and embarrassed, he hadn’t meant to break the instrument, he was never clumsy. Now he’d done both, in front of the entire court no less. As his father began to turn, a lecture defiantly on his lips, Bast fled. He held the lute in his rooms and wondered. It eventually dawned on him that he had an identical instrument, a gift from someone or other. It took a long while to locate the thing, dark wood gleamed between his fingers. He’d never used the thing. After all he preferred to dance than to play. 
> 
> To Bast’s dismay it took him a long while to locate the mortal Namer. Seven mortal days had passed when Bast happened upon the man. He was sat atop a standing Waystone under the cloudy night sky. Bastas shifted uneasily, now that he was here the Prince had very little idea of how to continue.

“Faen, if you mean to approach me, do not do it from behind, I am feeling neither forgiving nor patient.” His voice was deeper than Bast had expected and weary, more weary than a manling of his age should sound. The smell of blood finally reached Bast as he circled around to the front of the Namer. Clouds shifted and the glitter of wet upon the mortal’s clothing revealed his injury to Bast. 

Moving hesitantly the prince stepped up to the fallen stone that lay before the mortal’s perch. He wanted to ask how the manling had injured itself. They were so fragile. It seemed that they should certainly avoid anything strenuous or potentially damaging. And anyway this one was a musician and Namer, the first should not entangle him with danger and the second should defend him. So Bast was curious, but still he did not dare speak.

“Is there reason you approach, Fae.” It was not quite a question, more demand. Bast levered himself onto the standing stone without remark. Now he could see why the mortal was positioned so oddly, it was sewing closed a long cut that curved around its side. “Ah, the thieving princeling.” The Namer’s voice had taken on a flatness that did not suit his voice at all. Bast frowned, he’d not made a bad impression for decades. “Did you forget the weakness of mortal vision?” The manling had interpreted the frown his own way and Bast was ashamed to say, somewhat correctly, for he had no realised how close he’d have to be for his features to resolve in the human’s vision.

“Can you reach?” The way the human was contorting made it seem as if the stitches he’d already made would tear. The man flicked eyes over to him. 

“Needs must.” The dull green eyes dropped back to the wound. Bast started to move forward but stopped abruptly when the mortal spoke again. “Stop. Firstly I dislike you. Second you have found me at a most inopportune moment. Third,” the mortal hesitated, “if you meant to take over, the needle has more iron in it than you might like.”

“And you stick yourself with that?” Bast blurted before his mind could quite stop him. The mortal man snorted and immediately flinched. Not a flicker of pain touched his expression however and it dawned on Bast how threatened this man was feeling. The knowledge only confused him more. “You know my Name.” The Fae reminded the musician pointedly. 

Again the man paused in his stitching and looked across at the Prince. To Bast his face and eyes were empty of any emotion but their colour was darkening and his hands made an odd twisting smoothing motion. 

“You don’t know my Name?” Now Bast was confused. “But you said it!” A gentle smile pulled on the man’s lips. 

“Yes, I said it. And if needs be, I might say it again, but I do not know it.” Bast stared. “As Master Elodin would say, there are many things more dangerous than a Namer, one being a thoughtless young man learning to be a Namer.” The mortal rolled his eyes and returned to stabbing himself with cold iron.

“Is that why you didn’t say anything,” he didn’t want to say it, “when you left?”

“Yes.”

“What would have happened?” Bastas asked curiosity overriding caution.

Pausing again the mortal considered. “I don’t know. The last time, I called the wind and it came.”

“What made you call it? What did it do?”

Now the man looked up to meet his eyes, the mortals were black with remembrance. “A jackass had just stolen and broken my lute.” Bast blinked, what? Then the mortal’s eyes brightened momentarily. “The wind struck him to the cobbles, broke his arm. He had to pay the price twice over and I bought the beauty that you broke.” Bastas concealed a wince and the human returned to his stitches. Three more and he tied off. “So, princeling, what brings you to my camp?” The mortal gestured grandly at the darkness about them, and winced. He aborted the motion by rethreading the same needle with thread and picked up the shirt across his lap.

Bast watched the tiny stiches for a moment before answering. “Your lute of course.” The mortal’s hands almost missed the fabric entirely. His hands were far more expressive than his face, and Bast didn’t need to look to know that the mortal’s eyes had darkened. The awkward bundle he’d attached to his back was now set free. From the folds came the pale shape. Obviously achingly familiar to the mortal. The shirt was left half stitched in his lap as his hands came to meet the lute.

Now his face became expressive, gentle and reverent and heartbroken. His hands traced the pale wood down the neck to cradle the bowl. Fingers tentatively explored the contusion and his eyes blackened even as his face wiped the burgeoning fury away.

Bastas shivered. The fae turned away and took the other out of its wrapping. Dark wood did not shimmer in the intermittent moonlight. “Forgive me.” Bast begged, but it came out like a demand. Ice green eyes snapped up to his and Bast wondered what shade his own were. Dark like deep oceans with the strange agony of fearful anticipation, bright with desperate hope, or pale as winter sky with his shame. Something in the mortal’s face altered and the musician looked away, his eyes danced through the darkness but ever returned to the forlorn lute in his lap.

Unable to wait. Bast move close and tugged one of the musician’s hand until it came free of the pale lute, refusing all the while to meet the shifting green eyes. Into the freed hand he pressed the black neck of the dark lute. The questing green eyes dropped to their hands and he tensed. Bast shifted and pulled his hands away leaving the mortal with the fae’s gift.

Disbelief warred with desperation as Bast watched the manling. “It is mine to give. There is no trade, no bargain. I did you a wrong, this is my repentance.” The prince said trying to reassure the mortal into taking it.

Then with the pale carcass of the ruined lute still lying between his legs the manling cradled the dark one in his arms and began to twitch the strings and fiddle with the pegs. Bast watched hoping and not daring to move. Then the manling coaxed something tuneful out of the instrument. Bast sagged disappointment filled him, somehow he’d thought… thought that this mortal would be more, more than other mortals, his music rivalling the fae. A silly dream. As if hearing his thoughts the music changed and from the lute sprang a sound that was more than music, it was emotive and destructive and Bast was lost to it.

 

Morning came and with its light the musician stopped. His listener shook into the waking world and startled at the rising sun. Surely the mortal had not played through the night. 

“It is beautiful.” The last word was heavy with greater meaning as if the speaker would have used a word that encompassed something more, but could not find it.

**Author's Note:**

> The beginning of some kind of friendship.


End file.
